WORDS SVEND BERTIL FRANDSEN PHOTOGRAPHY DAS BURO
Denmark’s Fie Udby Erichsen is unlikely to forget 12 August 2016 for all the wrong reasons. At the top of her career and looking likely to retire following the Rio Olympics, an unhappy accident changed everything in a moment.
Fie was the silver medallist in the heavyweight women’s single at the London 2012 Olympics and she entered Rio with the hope of going one better, despite the fact that only six months earlier she had appeared far back in the running for an Olympic qualifying spot, struggling as she was with persistent injury. But after scraping an Olympic ticket through a hard-fought fourth place finish in Lucerne three months earlier, she arrived in Rio ready to turn the heat up on the competition. Despite the wind conditions on the Lagoa, she looked ready to put in the performance of a lifetime.